


À Demain

by almostbecamehistoric (capgal)



Series: Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:28:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capgal/pseuds/almostbecamehistoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras's final musings as he faces the firing squad that will claim his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	À Demain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a series of drabbles, all dealing with Enjolras and Grantaire's death together. Some are brick!verse, others are movie/musical!verse, and they are of varying POVs and lengths. The series is updated sporadically.

They failed.

No,  _he_  failed.

There are bodies strewn everywhere. Blood stains the ground, runs in rivulets along the cracks between cobblestones. Acrid, stinging smoke mixes with heavy blood in the air. Each breath burns in tired lungs. Bloodshot eyes do not shed tears—cannot shed tears. Marble fingers tremble slightly, seeking the grip of a carbine that isn’t there, that lies broken on the ground.

Blue eyes no longer see the Sun—will never see the coming dawn. Red lips press together in a tight line—no charming smile will grace them again. Pale hands clench, nails digging into skin—one into a tattered red flag, the other into a familiar calloused hand. The marble statue topples down from its pedestal; winged Icarus crashes to the ground, flying too close to the sun of tomorrow.

Oh, but Icarus is not the only one fallen. There are men, young and intrepid and beautiful, who fell by his side. Their faces flash before his eyes, each sending a pulse of pain rushing through his body in time with his heartbeats—his dying heartbeats, so numbered, so limited now, each one all the more precious for being one step closer to the end.

Jehan, soft-spoken, gentle, reciting endless verses with a faint blush tinging his cheeks and frail flowers dotting his honey blond curls—fallen face down on harsh cobblestones, eyes covered in a dirty rag, hands tied tight behind his back in rough, bruising ropes. 

Feuilly, always hardworking and faithful, tired features aflame with love for the people, with passion for the world—sprawled beneath the window, a hand still clutching a snapped chair leg he used as a club, shirt torn by bayonets and stained red with blood. 

Bossuet, somehow optimistic despite his continual bad luck, laughing at his own misfortune in smashing his mistress’s favorite vase—slumped against the bottom of the barricade, his luck finally run out, joyful features twisted in a grimace by the pain and instinctive fear of his last moments.

Bahorel, perpetually fighting, reckless and irreverent and sarcastic—taken by canons, broken body thrown carelessly on the cold ground, gone in one final fight he could not win. 

Joly, caring and intelligent and fretful, staring resolutely at his tongue in the mirror despite the raucous (but good-natured) jokes from Grantaire and Courfeyrac—face-down on the wooden floorboards, pale hands stained up to his wrists in the blood of the many injured students he had tried to save, killed not by the illnesses he so feared but by a hail of blazing bullets. 

Courfeyrac, warm and round and radiant, telling jokes in a late-night meeting that leaves all the exhausted revolutionaries in tears of laughter—crumpled on the floor of the Musain, hands linked with both Combeferre and Joly, uniting them all even in death.

Combeferre, the guide, gentle and firm and kind, quietly but excitedly explaining some medical theory that far surpasses the understanding of any Ami except perhaps Joly—glasses broken and crooked on his bloodied face, fingers still wrapped tightly around the pistol he wielded in a vain attempt to protect his friends until the end. 

 

Hope seems almost a foreign emotion now. Less than a full day after the start of their glorious fight, hope seems like a thing of fanciful tales, implausible imaginings of wistful thinkers. There is no sun. There is no hope. There is no tomorrow. There is but a dozen men staring him down, harsh rifle barrels pointing merciless at his unprotected chest, ready to tear the life away from him. 

But Grantaire is standing by his side. Grantaire, the cynic, the drunkard, the disbeliever—that man stands by his side, facing the cold barrels with a strange sort of confidence. Grantaire is dying for him, for the Cause. And if a cynic can turn a believer, then perhaps a reluctant city could turn a revolutionary center. Perhaps a burned and battered barricade can rise as a pyre of hope. Perhaps fallen young men—student, schoolboys whose only fault was to dare to dream—can become heroes and martyrs rather than despised traitors. Perhaps a failure can turn into the much-needed spark.

Perhaps then, he too can be forgiven.

A burning flash that steals the sight from his eyes. An echoing roar that wipes away his hearing. Eight bullets that tear his flesh—eight shots, eight wounds, each penance for a brother he failed. An open window. A body hanging upside down; a streaming banner, a terrible flag of revolution, of tomorrow—of defeat.

But perhaps it is too late for forgiveness now.


End file.
